Can I search all of my FM databases at one time from outside FM?

I have dozens and dozens of FM databases. They are all very simple, just text fields and images in the container fields. I often can't figure out which database I put an individual file into. Spotlight and EasyFind apparently don't search in my FM text fields. Is there any way, or program, that will search all of my FM text fields at the same time from outside FM? I can't find the answer with Google. Thanks.

AppleScript could be written to open up all your databases and perform finds on them, then perhaps report back the number of results in each table/file, but I think the real question is why are you separating your files like this? There is probably a better way.

I thought of ODBC with UNION query, but anyway you need to open all databases in FM, so without FMServer it may not worth, especially if there need word search in text field (cause slow wild card search in SQL).

It's true that the FMP JDBC driver unnecessarily restricts JDBC to the same physical machine. This same-machine-only restriction is a ridiculous, non-technical, FMI goof that only makes me use FMP less, not more. (Note: FMI -- I'm not nudged into using FMS due to this ridiculous restriction of your JDBC driver.)

But, if all the OP's FMP files are on the same physical machine, the JDBC option is free, fast, and not difficult.

having multiple databases for the same info doesnt seem reasonable to me. But you could make a master database connect all your tables in the database and then do a query in the master database looping all the tables

Word of caution, you can crash JDBC with overly large queries. I'm not sure what rules go along with that, just that it happens. I'd warn against doing large single queries, and would instead recommend smaller queries in some sort of order, like:

Well, I don't think you'll ever crash JDBC with large queries ... unless you exceed memory (which is configurable). However, to your point, I completely agree and always use paging as defined in any SELECT statement.

Note that FMP's paging syntax is different than, say, MySQL, but they both do the same thing.

If you have a particular demonstrable use-case that will crash JDBC Java code other than large queries, which you should handle with paging anyway, please update this thread.